Background

Football Manager 2008, the critically acclaimed PC favourite sees you take on the role at nearly any club you wish to. With an extremely detailed database of squads, players and competitions, this year's edition on the Xbox 360 look set to be a hit.

Features

Match Flow – The largest change to match-day in a Sports Interactive game since the introduction of the second match engine. Match flow brings more atmosphere to match-days with match previews, team talks, opposition player instructions, the match itself, half time and post match. These now seamlessly follow on from one another, with no more pausing to make tactical changes, and a mini-radar pitch whilst making those tactical changes to keep you in touch with what’s going on in the match

International Management – The international management gameplay has been completely revamped for Football Manager™ 2008, including, but not limited to, media improvements, international retirements, player interaction, international scouting, improved pool selection, captain selection and a separation of international and club morale for players.

Easier to Use – A much cleaner skin, a brand new advisor system to help players through various areas of the game. A new notes and notebook system, better button positioning for simpler navigation and an updated tutorial and manual. Also, coach reports make taking over a new team easier, and the new calendar system lists all important dates throughout the season. These all help to make Football Manager™ 2008 the easiest Sports Interactive game to use yet.

Confidence – Players can now easily tell what the board and supporters think about their performance in the game through the new confidence section. This gives players feedback not just on their current progress in competitions, but also their financial management and signings.

Transfer Centre – A new way of managing all current transfer and loan bids for a players club, both incoming and outgoing, making it easier to compare bids and reject or accept them.

Match Engine Improvements – A greatly improved match engine, once again utilising the footballing brain of former Republic of Ireland international player Ray Houghton as well as other tools used by real-life managers to make the most accurate simulation of football in a computer game. The ability to change the pitch dimensions at the start of the season to suit players styles of play better has also been added.

Awards re-write – An overhaul of the awards system inside the game which is not only more accurate now, but also includes new awards such as the European golden boot, and a “best eleven”, which shows the all-time (in game) best eleven for all teams and nations.

Finances revamp – To reflect the changes in modern day football, Sports Interactive have updated the finance area of Football Manager™ 2008 to better reflect the ever changing football world, with more information available to the manager too, including, but not limited to, corporate match day income, season ticket news, investment funds, improved sponsorships, collective win bonuses, and the ability to move around funds from the wage budget and transfer budget (and vice versa) at any point to help you in your quest for the ideal squad.

Fan days – The board can now arrange fan days to boost ailing attendances, or for matches that are likely to attract a low crowd, with a long term affect to attendances if all goes well.

Expanded media – More media and feedback than ever before, plus more detail in existing media, and a new competition news section to find out what major things are going on in all league competitions.

Regenerated player photo’s – All in game generated players now have pictures using FaceGen technology to give each player more personality, and the ability for the players to be seen to grow up in front of your eyes as the game is going on.

Faster – Saving and loading is now significantly faster, with network gaming faster and smoother to play, as well as tactical changes and match reports being quicker than ever before.

The foghorn sound of my snozzlers exploding once more erupts through the room. I have the plague, and I am dying. My throat is dry no more how much water is tossed down to it, my head aches no matter how many aspirins are taken, no matter how many walls it is banged against. And to top it all of my nose is rebelling and insisting on spurting a viscous, thick, green sludge out at high speed every minute or so. Little bastard. The very sound of my typing is disturbing by the occasional snot rocket and every tap of a button grinds another jigsaw of pain into my cranium. A growing bag of used tissues is at my feet, a loo roll at my side, as I lament at the current predicament I am in. Woe is me woe is me woe is me. The unending depression caused by my degraded position is made all the worse by the fact that this is a weekend. The only freetime I get, and I'm spending it bitching because I feel crap. Woopdedoo. Perfect for me to miss the game today.

Anyway, you probably don't want a self-pity ramble from me, so I'll try and direct my descriptive energies elsewhere, hohum. I could ramble about rambling in a ramblish kind of way. See? I suppose, I suppose, um, I typed that went away and lost my train of thought. Ah yes, I suppose I could talk about a game or something, extend my borders, reach out of the world of tissues and snot rockets. Good idea mate. Spot on. Right, so. Recently I downloaded the national association badges for Football Manager 08 (thanks to the lovely cgauld7) to replace the generic rounded flags, and they look good. They look really good, they give the game variation that looks good with the Flex skin and cut-out facepack. The game looks really really good. And so does my team. But after looking at the squad line-up in overview mode I saw that I had more Spaniards than Englishmen in my 2014 Liverpool squad. Seeing as I had attempted to roleplay Rafael Benitez in the game this didn't surprise me, but then I looked back at my past transfers, and I hadn't signed a player from an English club for three years, when I panic bought Matt Murray as a back-up keeper from Wolves. Wondering why, it was pretty easy to come to the conclusion that they were all overpriced bastards anyway, and my youth squad produced enough gems anyway. So I clicked on my youth squad, and my assistant rated my top five youngsters under eighteen, only one of them was English, one was Polish, one Scottish and the other two Irish. Bugger that, I really was a foreign outlet. All Liverpudlian youngsters though.

It was time to compare my English and Spanish players to try and observe any class difference, it was- Pepe Reina, Miguel Torres, Raul Albiol, Emilio Insua, Iago, Silva, Fernando Torres, Alfonso Guerrero (regen forward) and Antonio Barragan versus Jack Hobbs, Steven Gerrard, Paul Anderson, Adam Barnes (regen wonderkid), Justin Kelly (another good regen) and Daryl Fisher (regen who failed to live up to expectations). 9 v 6. Looking at that the standard was higher in the Spanish camp, but they were generally maturer players in their peak and internationals, while the English contingent had only two players between 22 and 30, the rest being either youngsters or older (Gerrard). It seemed that the Spaniard were generally better and first teamers, while the English ones would one day be, hopefully.

What a ramble, I probably lost a lot of readers with that, ho hum. You'd have to be dedicated to slave your way through that, and I will be gratified if you did. Muchos gracias, all of you. And I hope your not too bored out of your skull.